
Britain s finest short-story writer Helen Simpson. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history,said Novalis, the 18th-century author and philosopher who forms the subject of (and, indeed, supplies the epigraph for) Penelope Fitzgerald s The Blue Flower. But what of short stories? We re all familiar with the doorstopping historical novel, but what of its pithier, pocket-sized counterpart? According to Brad Hooper s Short …